Today in Digital Marketing - No, America, Doctors Do Not Review Google’s Content.

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca. R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. Today, a new search engine could soon be vying for your media budget. Ikea's clever use of Instagram stories. Snapchat goes after local advertisers. And the Google Ads feature we all wanted is here. So you've run ads on Google, you've tried your hand at Bing, get ready for the next search engine that will eventually want a slice of your media budget. Brave. Today, Brave is a privacy-focused web browser created by a former Firefox executive.

Starting point is 00:01:12 It uses part of Google's Chrome that is open-sourced. It's called Chromium, so all the regular Chrome extensions work just fine. And it feels very much like Chrome, but all the code that sends data back to Google has been stripped out. I've been using Brave for about six months now. It's been a great experience. Now they are planning to get into the search engine business by opening up a beta registration site to get started. Competition is good for us digital marketers,

Starting point is 00:01:39 and the one place we need it most is probably search engine ads. Google's search engine has a 92% market domination. Bing's next, but it's at less than 3%. And even some other brands you may have heard of, like DuckDuckGo, actually use Bing as their primary data sources. Brave says its search engine will be completely anonymous, and they won't collect IP addresses. By that, I think they mean they won't store IP addresses, because you have to have an IP address of the user. Otherwise, the server won't know who to send the search results to.

Starting point is 00:02:13 Anyway, as for the advertising side, they have an ad platform planned and an option for people to pay a subscription to opt out of ads. With 25 million monthly active users, the Brave browser will make a great funnel into their new search engine, though they say they won't make Brave search the default, at least not at first. A big move by Snapchat shows it wants to get into the local ads business. The company today announcing a partnership

Starting point is 00:02:43 with media giant Gannett to have them promote Snapchat ads to small local businesses in the US and Canada. This gives them a huge headstart. Gannett already counts more than 100,000 of these as clients. Gannett salespeople will be trained on Snapchat and how to convince business owners to try it out. Local is actually a big part of the app already

Starting point is 00:03:04 and not many people realize it. They have a map with businesses on it. Tap the business icon, and you get that store's details, just like Google. It said in a recent results call that 35 million businesses are listed. Ikea has launched a clever game built inside Instagram Stories. It's a game for couples that polls them about who does the most chores, how long they spend on housework, would you rather clean the toilet or do the taxes, that sort of thing.

Starting point is 00:03:34 It's intended to get couples talking about gender inequality in household work. They partnered with a relationship expert and a Swedish singer and activist. And it's presented as a bunch of animated cards that you and your partner go through together. It's pretty simple. You just advance through each card that asks one of these questions. The cards remind you that you can tap and hold the screen to pause stories from advancing.

Starting point is 00:03:56 It also uses some of the polling functions. It's a pretty interesting use of stories outside the usual. And worth checking out, it's on IKEA's Instagram account in their Stories highlights. You're looking for the highlight button called 50-50. It's the season for new styles and you love to shop for jackets and boots. So when you do,

Starting point is 00:04:18 always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at Rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at Rakuten.ca.

Starting point is 00:04:48 R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A. TikTok today released one of their engagement tools to all creator accounts globally. That tool is the Q&A feature, previously only given to a select group of accounts. It's basically a link in someone's bio that takes them to a special comments page where, the idea is, your followers can ask you or your brand questions. Then you can pull those questions out into a response video. As of today, that feature is now available to everyone who has a TikTok creator account.

Starting point is 00:05:15 You can actually convert your account into a creator account in the settings if you want, though that type is different than a business account, which might be more relevant for your brand. It will also be available during live streams, so you'll be able to see incoming questions in a separate area. You do have to enable it in the settings. So if this is something your brand can use, be sure you've updated the app and go turn it on. Americans trust Google more than Facebook or TikTok.

Starting point is 00:05:45 Those are the findings from a recent survey of just over a thousand Americans. So not a huge data pool, but interesting nonetheless. 65% of people said they trusted Google. Only 37% said that for Facebook and only 28% for TikTok. In case you're curious, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Samsung were all above the 60% mark. Reddit and Twitter were both around 43%. But while two-thirds said they trusted Google the most, nearly 7 out of 10 people polled also said they're worried about the data Google collects.

Starting point is 00:06:18 Can we just stop for a moment and realize what a massive win this is for Google PR? People are worried about its intrusion into their lives, but yeah, they trust it just fine. The premium newsletter today has all the pretty charts and tables from the survey. The most concerning finding, you may want to sit down for this. 61% of Americans polled said they think medical professionals verify all of the medical content that's on Google. 18% said they weren't sure. The survey was conducted by SEO Clarity. And three small items in the lightning round today.

Starting point is 00:06:59 Google Ads has updated its mobile app to let you set up custom notifications. For example, let's say you're planning a spring sale campaign and you want to stay on top of how conversion volume changes week over week. With this new feature, you can create a custom notification to alert you when weekly conversions increase by more than 10%. Don't panic if you notice your brand's Instagram likes are down this week. There was a glitch that caused some accounts to lose likes. Instagram says they fixed it now.

Starting point is 00:07:25 And while your likes may be down, your page speed score may be up. It's not a bug, but it's also not reality. Turns out Google has tweaked the way it checks a site's speed. It now uses HTTP2. Previously, it was using, wait for it, HTTP1, which had a limit to how much data could be transmitted. So it's not that you've got a faster site. It's that Google's pathway to measure your site speed is faster.

Starting point is 00:07:49 More than 300 digital marketers just like you are in our Slack community. Inside, you'll find exclusive deep dive episodes. Jobs get posted there. People use it to get advice, all sorts of stuff. It's free to join. Just tap the link in this episode's notes or go to todayindigital.com slash slack. Oh, I love to read and everything. And if you ask me what I'll say,

Starting point is 00:08:13 because Oscar Mayer has a way with theology and A. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - No, America, Doctors Do Not Review Google’s Content.

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